Diary of an average angler

With my left hip limiting my walking range I decided to go to the Top Stream at Offord which is only about a five minute walk from the car park. This choice was also influenced by the fact that the water level had been high following heavy rain and the Top Stream offered perhaps the least affected stretch, although in fact the main river had returned to normal levels. I stopped off at the tackle shop for maggots and worms, thus delaying my arrival.

A successful perch session last autumn (10 November 2022) led me to hope for something similar on this occasion. But it wasn't to be. On the previous occasion bites came quickly but today I had a long wait for the first knock, which was just that, a knock that didn't offer much chance of striking.

I started in the nearside margin, which had produced previously, but after a while with no bites I cast to mid stream. I had assumed that the perch were absent since neither maggots nor worm enticed them. But after a few knocks I finally connected with a fish that proved to be a small perch. I hoped that this would perhaps presage more fish from a shoal, but it wasn't to be. There were a few more knocks but the only other fish was a ruffe, which was on when I retrieved having not seen or felt a bite.

And after a while the few knocks I was getting stopped. By now the wind had increased and was proving a nuisance, causing rod top movement that made it difficult to spot the occasional knocks.

Bites eventually dropped off completely so I moved downstream a bit to the swim by the footbridge, which crosses the small outflow from the stream into what is referred to as the car park pool. A bank of rushes offered a feature to fish to, so I thought it was worth a try. But in the event I didn't get a bite, either by the rushes or in midstream.

As a final throw of the dice, so to speak, I tried the swim in the car park pool just below the outflow. I hadn't fished it previously although had seen people fishing there in the past. The pool is very popular with pike anglers but I'm not sure how it performs otherwise. In fact, having left a bunch of maggots out for about 45 minutes I didn't get a touch, and the maggots showed no signs of being played with. So, that was it. I decided to pack up.

As is often the case, my vision of what might transpire during the session wasn't borne out in practice. The Top Stream is a known perch haunt but on the day it wasn't to be. Perhaps the recent high water had caused the fish to relocate to more secluded spots. Yet one more angling mystery.